When it comes to gun deaths America really is exceptional. Every statistical measure shows that compared, for example, to European countries we Americans kill our fellow citizens, and ourselves , with guns hundreds of times more frequently than any other modern society.
School shootings in which students die at the hands of their disgruntled fellow students are almost a weekly occurrence these days. " going postal" is now part of our vocabulary. But aside from our usual " my thoughts and prayers are with you" too grieving parents and relatives, what are we doing about it? More to the point, what is Congress doing about it. The majority of the people in America according to polls that have been taken want stronger gun laws, better background checks, Etc in Congress does nothing.
Well, what can it do? Can we take military style weapons out of our national environment? Probably not! There would probably be some Bloodshed if we tried, and there's so many of the damn things in circulation that you'd never get them all. So anyone who's peeved because their neighbors dog craps on their lawn can pull out their AR-15 and Massacre 10 or 20 of his neighbors. A student who got turned down for a date to the prom can gun down a bunch of his fellow students. Is it mental health, is it guns, is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster, phases of the Moon? Is there just one kind of motivation for all these extreme murderers? Probably not. If there is a whole bunch of social scientist who been looking for it have not been very successful.
I have a few suggestions that are probably more practicable.
When I was still working I taught a special class in behavior modification tpparents of difficult children: autistic spectrum, intellectually handicapped comma Etc. ( please note, I did not attempt to apply behavior modification to personality disorders. I was only interested in giving parents a tool to deal with specific disruptive behaviors: spinning, head-banging, that sort of thing)
To simplify the theory behind all this I called my class the ABCs of Behavioral Change. "A" stood for antecedent, what preceded the behavior. "B" stood for the behavior itself. "C" was the consequences, what came after the behavior. To change any Behavior one needs to modify the antecedents, the environmental factors that produce the behavior, or the consequences, what came after the behavior. Of course I caught the parents other things too: how to reserve and record Behavior, how to make decisions about what techniques to use Etc, but the important thing for this discussion was the ABCs Theory.
There are few things that we can do to change the antecedents. We can do what Iceland does it make it more difficult to actually obtain a gun: required classes, training, instruction and so on. We can also make having a gun more like having a car. More difficult tests for obtaining a gun license, required gun insurance, and serious and stiffer penalties 4 people to think about trading guns illegally or without satisfying the legal requirements.
It's harder to use external factors to modify the behavior itself. I can now lock my phone in a way that only my fingerprint will unlock it and make it operable. Could we do that with guns? Probably but it would make the guns cost more and so the gun manufacturers won't like that. So let's think about how we can change what comes after the behavior, the consequences.
One obvious consequences is stiffer penalties for people who use their guns illegally, whether they're poaching deer or poaching people. Maybe something like a 10-year penalty for anyone who uses the gun in the commission of a crime, the penalty to be served before the penalty for the actual crime itself begins. We could have stiffer penalties for people caught with an unregistered or illegal gun. How about 5 years? Or how about 2 years of Public Service? Or maybe a stiff fine and the forfeiture of any right to own or operate a gun. You get the point. If you don't modify one of the ABCs nothing is going to change.
One of the last things I taught my parents was that it was better to reinforce the behavior you want then to punish the behavior you don't want. So how about if we have a license fee for owning a gun but then give a rebate if that gun owner doesn't transgress 4, say, five years. In other words a cash rebate? How about rewarding gun owners with free target practice at public ranges? How about allowing responsible gun users to take part in shooting competitions with prizes? There are lots of possibilities.
Would these work? Probably! Behavior modification, despite its bad name, actually does work. And all this time I haven't once mentioned the culture of violence that is perpetuated by our TVs, R movies, even our news coverage.
Will the ABCs work perfectly? Does anything? But most people agree we have to do something and the research is very clear that just putting more guns in the system doesn't help. We have to do something.
In the end we need to change our culture and teach accommodation and communication rather than confrontation and violence as solutions to problems. That will be the really hard part. We have to do something. Statistically we are more in danger from our fellow citizens then we are from angry jihadists and in my humble opinion that's one of the things that's causing us to respond in aggressive ways.
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